“As the first women’s college to provide graduate and undergraduate education for women, Bryn Mawr is honored to bring together some of the world’s brightest and most-respected trailblazers for women’s education,” says Bryn Mawr President Jane McAuliffe.

During the conference, distinguished international scholars and experts, presidents of women’s institutions around the globe, and NGO leaders will examine issues of educational access, equity, and opportunity in secondary schools and universities in the United States and around the world. Conference speakers and participants will also explore how women’s colleges, girls’ schools, and myriad social and educational initiatives in the U.S. and abroad can advance opportunity for girls and women.

Session topics will include:

Leveling the Academic Playing Field: Strategies for Change

Enhancing Global Networks-discussion of current and future collaborative connections among women’s colleges around the world

Partnering for Global Justice-exploration of possible partnerships between schools, colleges and international NGOs to promote women’s rights and educational opportunities

About Nicholas Kristof:

A columnist for The Times since 2001, Kristof won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1990, which he shared with his wife WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.” Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to warn that the United States was losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

About Melanne Verveer:

As director of the Department of State’s new office on Global Women’s Issues, Verveer coordinates foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic, and social advancement of women around the world. She mobilizes concrete support for women’s rights and political and economic empowerment through initiatives and programs designed to increase women’s and girls’ access to education and health care, to combat violence against women and girls in all its forms, and to ensure that women’s rights are fully integrated with human rights in the development of U.S. foreign policy.